Monday, February 20, 2017

While I am generally
loathe to quote other media sources, recent news on both the Foreign Policy and Airwars
websites show how the United States has potentially added to the already
significant problems facing Syrians who have remained in their war-torn
homeland.

According to both
non-mainstream sources, United States Central Command Spokesman, Major Josh
Jacques, recently admitted that the United States had used a total of 5265
armour-piercing 30 mm rounds from Air Force A-10 fixed-wing aircraft between
November 16 and 22, 2015, destroying about 350 vehicles located in Syria's
eastern desert. These vehicles were part of a convoy being used to
transport oil as a means of funding ISIS' operations in the region as shown here:

Let's look at some
background before we continue with the main subject of this posting. Here
is a photo of the A-10, also known as the Warthog:

The A-10 is equipped with
a 30 mm gun, giving it significant and precise firepower, resulting in lower
collateral damage. According to the U.S. Department of Defense,
the A-10's arrived at the Incirlik base in Turkey on October 18th, just after
the Turkish government opened up the base to "strike assets".
Most of the operations from the base are over Syrian territory and are
used to provide air support for the Syrian Democratic Forces (i.e the
anti-Assad forces) in the northeastern part of the country. A fully
loaded A-10 has the capacity to carry 2000 pound and 500 pound joint direct attack munitions
or JDAMs, laser-guided JDAMs, the AGM-55 Marverick air-to-ground tactical
missile and the aforementioned 30 millimetre GAU-8/A Avenger gun with 1150
rounds of ammunition. The gun is a hydraulically driven seven-barrels
Gatling-type auto-cannon that is so accurate that it is not guided by lasers or
Global Positioning System signals.

Here
is a video showing a test of the A-10s GAU-8 Gatling gun both on the ground and
in-flight:

At its high rate, the
GAU-8 fires 3900 rounds of mixed high explosive incendiary
and armour piercing incendiary ammunition per minute with a maximum range over
over 1250 metres and a muzzle velocity of 1067 metres per second.

With that background,
let's go back to the news posted by both Foreign Policy and Airwares.
While use of the awesome power of the A-10's Gatling gun is not
surprising, what is surprising is that the Air Force is admitting that they
used 5265 rounds of armour-piercing rounds that contained depleted uranium on the dates in question,
similar ammunition to that which was used during Operation Desert Storm.
Back then, the Airforce used Armour Piercing Incendiary munitions with a
depleted uranium (DU) penetrator slug because these munitions were particularly
effective at countering armour-plated Iraqi tanks. The 148 A-10s used during Operation
Desert Storm flew 8077 combat sorties, firing a total of 783,514 rounds of
Armour Piercing Incendiary munitions, leaving a total of 249 tons of DU in the
region.

Depleted uranium is
sourced from depleted uranium 235 discarded by nuclear power plants as well as depleted medical waste. According to the World Health Organization, it has a
radioactivity level that is about 60 percent of the radioactivity of the 3
percent uranium used as a fuel source. It has a density twice that of
lead and, as such, makes an ideal metal for penetrating armour plating.
WHO's summary of DU states that there are three main methods of exposure:

1.) inhalation - the most
likely route of intake when the depleted uranium is re-suspended in the
atmosphere by wind or other forms of disturbance.

2.) ingestion - from
drinking water or food.

3.) dermal contact - only
a risk when it enters the system through an open wound or from embedded
fragments.

About 95 percent of the
uranium entering the body is not absorbed and is eliminated by way of faeces.
Between 0.2 and 2 percent of the uranium in food is absorbed by the
gastrointestinal tract. The organs that suffer the most from exposure to
depleted uranium are the kidneys and lungs with particles smaller than one to
ten micrometers in size being retained in the lungs, resulting in radiation damage
and potential lung cancer over a long period of time. A 2010 study by Chris Busby et al found that
there was an increased occurrence of cancer, leukaemia and congenital birth
defects in the Fallujah area of Iraq between 2005 and 2010. Keep in mind
that Fallujah was an area where there were a very significant number of U.S.
military operations, some of which used depleted uranium (as well as white
phosphorus). Here is a table showing the relative risks of various types
of cancer in Fallujah with the "Rep" column showing the reported
number of cases and the "Exp" column showing the expected number of
cases:

As you can see, the reported incidences of cancer are far higher than what would normally be expected. While the authors do not
draw a direct link between the use of depleted uranium munitions and the
significant increase in the occurrence of cancers in the Fallujah region, at the very least, the
coincidence is rather interesting.

Given that the use of
depleted uranium munitions has become highly controversial particularly after
Operation Desert Storm, it is rather surprising that the United States Air
Force would continue to use these munitions in Syria, especially given that the
long-term ramifications of its use could be linked to increased medium- and long-term health risks to
the civilian population. As well, the operations in November 2015 were
aimed at disabling "soft targets" like oil tanker trucks as in the video above rather than
enemy armoured vehicles; in the Department of Defense's own Law of War Manual it clearly states that :

"6.5.7 Depleted
Uranium Munitions. Depleted uranium (DU) is used in some munitions because its
density and physical properties create a particularly effective penetrating
combination to defeat enemy armored vehicles, including tanks."

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About Me

I have been an avid follower of the world's political and economic scene since the great gold rush of 1979 - 1980 when it seemed that the world's economic system was on the verge of collapse. I am most concerned about the mounting level of government debt and the lack of political will to solve the problem. Actions need to be taken sooner rather than later when demographic issues will make solutions far more difficult. As a geoscientist, I am also concerned about the world's energy future; as we reach peak cheap oil, we need to find viable long-term solutions to what will ultimately become a supply-demand imbalance.